Consumers Are Paying the Price for Washington’s Outdated Copyright Law

Families deserve to know when Washington is making things more expensive. That is why it is important to shine a light on how an obscure federal law written nearly three decades ago has been turned into a tool that drives up costs for ordinary Americans.

Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was enacted in 1998 as a protective measure against theft of digital inventions. The target was clear: people illegally copying and distributing music and movies. What lawmakers did not anticipate was that large manufacturers would one day embed technological protection measures, such as access controls and proprietary passcodes, into everything from automobiles to washing machines then use the same copyright provision to lock out consumers and independent repair shops from repairing them.

That is where we are today. When your car’s check engine light comes on, a local mechanic may have the skill and the parts to fix it, but if the repair requires bypassing the manufacturer’s software controls, federal law may make that illegal. The same is true for a broken refrigerator, a malfunctioning HVAC unit, or a tractor that stops running at the worst possible moment. The manufacturer’s authorized technician gets the call. The independent shop down the street does not.

This is not how a competitive market is supposed to work. Consumers pay for a product outright and then discover that the manufacturer retains effective control over what happens to it for the life of the device. Independent repair businesses, which handle the majority of post-warranty automotive work alone, are cut out of jobs they are fully qualified to do, and consumers are left with fewer choices and higher bills. That dynamic repeats across every product category where software has become part of the repair equation, from power tools to farm equipment, consumer electronics, and more.

Targeted reforms to Section 1201 would restore what consumers reasonably expect when they make a purchase: the ability to have their property repaired by someone of their choosing. It would not compromise legitimate intellectual property protections or expose trade secrets. It would simply close the loophole that allows manufacturers to turn a copyright statute into a barrier to competition.

Conservatives have long understood that concentrated market power, whether propped up by regulation or law, is bad for consumers and the economy. When government policy hands a company a captive customer base, the incentives to compete on price and quality disappear. That is precisely what Section 1201 has enabled in the repair market. Fixing it is not a big-government solution; it is the opposite. It gets Washington out of the business of picking winners and losers. It also helps small businesses compete to repair items from tractors, to cars, to electronic devices. Small businesses after all are the economic engine that drives our country’s economy. When companies are free to compete, consumers get the best product at the best price, and are also free to choose for themselves. 

Congress has a golden opportunity to act. Members who have staked out positions on behalf of consumers, small businesses, and free markets should see DMCA reform as a chance to deliver real, immediate relief for working families without new spending or increased bureaucracy. The cost of inaction falls on the families and small business owners who pay inflated repair bills every day because a 1998 law was never updated to reflect the world we actually live in.

Consumer protection and free-market competition are not competing values; they reinforce each other. Reforming the DMCA is a chance to prove it. These anti-competitive repair moats are bad for both customers and small businesses. 

Tennessee’s entire congressional delegation should support this free-market movement and enact meaningful and needed reform. 

Walter Blanks Jr. is the Founder and Executive Director of The Legacy Society.